After his body went unclaimed for more than a week, workers at Mount Carmel Nursing Home in Manchester, New Hampshire recently gave an 89-year-old man a full military funeral.
“It was just something we had to do,” said nurse Stephen Brown. “He had no family. He was a great guy. Never complained, even with how sick he was.”
In an industry where death is often hidden, it’s refreshing to see the staff of a nursing home so involved in the passing of a resident. It reminded us of our February post, The Grief Experiences of CNAs, where Sue Misiorski, PHI’s Director of Organizational Culture Change, left this comment:
This is such an important and sensitive discussion. I have two very vivid memories from working as a CNA in a nursing home that fueled a personal desire to honor both the clients and the workers in a radically different way upon death. First, the place I worked thought that death should be hidden from the residents. The practice that resulted was a process of closing every door to resident rooms between the room of the person that died and the loading dock where the body was taken to a funeral home representative. We were expected to hurry the body out and then act as if nothing had happened to other residents. Every alert resident was well aware this meant someone died and they would not be told who–as if the person never existed. The other memory I have that is equally troubling is entering the room of a resident that I had a very close relationship with and finding the room empty. No one had notified me of the person’s death and that feeling of entering the emptyiness was sickening.
Gratefully, there are nursing home providers all across the country that are involved in a national movement to change the living and working culture inside nursing homes. Very promising practices are emerging for honoring the end of life in a way that supports the workers, the residents, and the families.
The first story I heard was out of a facility in Rochester, NY called Fairport Baptist Home. At Fairport, when a resident dies they sound a chime over the facility intercom. They announce the name of the individual who has passed away, and invite anyone who lives and works in the home to come to a bedside memorial service. They then form a processional to take the elder out the front door–not the loading dock. The staff, residents and families all have the opportunity to share memories, to laugh, to grieve, to honor their relationship with this individual and send a strong message that this person’s life mattered.
For more on this topic, Sue recommends a booklet titled “The Sanctity of Life, The Sacredness of Death” from the Pioneer Network.
Feel free to share your thoughts or stories on this topic in the comments area below.
Aaron Toleos, Online Communications Director
atoleos@phinational.org
